Yesterday, the Democratic State Committee met remotely to organize for the quadrennium. We elected almost 100 new members based on constituencies, the results of said elections can be found here. The new uncontested add-on seats will be posted shortly. We elected most of our officers: Male Vice-Chair Leon Brathwaite, Female Vice-Chair Deb Kozikowski, Secretary Carol Aloisi, and Treasurer Rufus Gifford, of whom only the last was not an incumbent. (Per state law the Chair gets elected in November following the presidential election.)
We voted to approve a Rules Committee proposal to cancel this year’s state convention. Many of us, including I think the Chair, very much wanted to move forward and the intended date (May 30th) is technically at least for now outside the window of stay at home orders. However, it was determined there would not be a way to fairly conduct the 102 remaining local caucuses that were suddenly cancelled when the Governor declared a state of emergency and some might have still been reluctant to attend a large gathering on that day. The Chair will ask Secretary Galvin to simply place both Markey’s and Kennedy’s names on the September 1st primary ballot. Contrary to what was suggested by initial press reports there is NO party endorsement for either candidate. It was the campaigns who agreed that Markey probably would have won the convention and Kennedy would probably have cleared the ballot access threshold. There are plans to hold a grand unity event in the fall in lieu of convention.
Since no national caucuses have occurred yet it is still possible to conduct those fairly and in a consistent manner. These were originally scheduled for 1PM on April 25th. Instead they will be conducted by mail and the party is looking for everyone’s help publicizing this. Between April 6th and April 22nd anyone who was a registered Democrat by February 12th of this year can either call the party or fill out an online form to request a ballot. The voter can request a ballot for only one of the three viable candidates (Biden, Sanders, or Warren) in the congressional district. The list of candidates for delegate will be pre-printed and must be mailed back by the deadline given. (UPDATE: The request form for the national caucus ballots is now available at https://massdems.org/nationalconvention/.)
Toward the end of the meeting the state committee suspended the rules to expedite approval of a resolution supporting legislative efforts to reduce signature requirements in these times.
